The Long Way Back

We are here! We arrived here at 7pm on Wednesday. In case any of you knew our itinerary, that is a day later that our tickets said we would arrive. Altogether we traveled for 2 days and 13 hours. Yikes. If you want to know the whole long story, read on.

First off, we found out the day before we left that AB had an ear infection. So she was a bit cranky from the ear pain, and we never knew if she was not herself due to the infection or sleep deprivation. I am pretty sure it was a icky combination of the two.

It turns out we accumulated a lot of stuff over the past 5 months. We came to the US with 3 suitcases, and the entire contents of one suitcase was handed over to my sister for her baby girl. So, where did all this stuff come from? Friends, family and LB's awesome bargain hunting skills.

It took FOREVER to pack everything. This was primarily because we had to make optimal use of luggage space and this entailed taking everything out of packages (like dumping a box of Mac and Cheese into a baggie), labeling the baggies, taking tags off of everything and weighing everything. Then once we realized we had more stuff than we had space, we had to go pull out all of the clothes for the kids that they would not need for the next year. We were allotted 8 pieces of luggage. The day before we left we realized we needed 9, then the day we left it got bumped up to 10. Extra luggage fees are cheaper than mailing. We really could have filled up 12 or 13 suitcases, but we can only manage handling so much. When friends come later this year they will bring all the things we left - hopefully. When we checked-in at the airport on Sunday we had 10 - 50lb bags, 4 carry-on's, 4 personal items, 2 car seats, and 1 stroller.

Unfortunately we learned the hard way, just because you can do something, does not mean you should. Navigating the airport and getting onto the plane with all of our stuff was a disaster. Absolute disaster. KB and I got separated while boarding the plane in Dallas, and I was stuck with AB's car seat (and car seat dolly), DB and his car seat and 3 of our 8 bags. It was physically impossible for me to get on the plane while maneuvering all of our stuff. Finally 3 very kind strangers helped. I am positive I smacked every person on my right side with the back of the baby bag. I just kept apologizing and moved on. Also, it did not help that we were sitting in the very last row of the plane...guess that is what you get when you buy your plane tickets the day before you leave : )

American Airlines has a rule pertaining to car seats. I understand the safety reasons for the rule, but it is not very practical and it does not add to the other passenger's enjoyment of the flight when you have a upset child. Essentially when you have two car seats, they must be set side by side. We could not put AB by the window, me next, then DB on the isle. Nope. It could only be AB, DB, and then me. So when AB dropped her blanket and started crying (the flight was scheduled to take off an hour and a half after her bedtime - we could not expect her to hold it together), I had to unbuckle, crawl under DB's car seat, retrieve her blanket, crawl back under, get in my seat and then hand it to her.

AB is good on planes; she has lots of experience. In her 2 years of life she has flown more than most adults who do not fly for a living, but she is usually a bit restless until we take off. Therefore delays once we are in the plane are brutal. Guess who's flight was delayed after we boarded the plane? Our's. Apparently there was a bad seat cushion. For the sake of my sanity I will assume the integrity of the seat cushion's ability to serve as a floatation device was compromised, not that there was some junk of the cushion, because their 30 minute search for a new seat cushion lost us a window to land in San Francisco, and we had to wait an additional hour to take off.

Our flight to Hong Kong was an hour and 50 minutes after our DFW flight was scheduled to land. Of course we were the last ones off of the plane, and of course we have more stuff than anyone should have, and of course the one airport person we asked for directions to the international terminal gave us bad directions. We ran/speed walked for 20 minutes to make our flight. We arrived to security and it was closed. Our plane left without us. Now we were stuck a closed airport at 1:05am in San Francisco (that is 3:05 am Texas time), and what were we to do?

Two of us cried, and one of them was not under 3 years old or KB. Then we called American Airlines. They got us on the same flight the next day. I asked them if they could locate our luggage. They said no. They could only confirm where it was not - Dallas. They did not know if it made it on the HK flight or was still in San Francisco, that was helpful. I then asked if they would get us a hotel room. She said they would, but they could not give us a voucher until their counter opened at 4am. That stunk. We spent a miserable night in the closed cafe at the airport with our massive amount of stuff, a cranky 2 year old and a baby. At 4 am I checked the American Airlines desk, not open. I checked every hour until 8 am, and they were never open. Finally at 10 am we found out, oh there is no international American Airlines counter (even though there was a sign for it), only a domestic counter. KB went to their counter and got our vouchers. When he went to get the vouchers he rode the tram - that's right the tram. It took him all of 3 minutes to get to the AA counter. We ran/speed walked for 20 minutes with all of our stuff trying to catch our flight and the whole time there was speedy tram. I do not think the tram would have gotten us there before they closed the gate, but what was that airport worker thinking when he recommended we walk rather than take the tram. He said we could take the tram, but walking would be just as fast. Bad advice for sure or some kind of sick sense of humor.

Based on our experience I have a few recommendations for American Airlines.

1. Have extra seat cushions handy. If they are important enough to delay a flight, they should be easily accessible.

2. Let passengers with kids and most definately those with car seats board the plane first. Those first class passengers would probably be really grateful to not have to worry about being smacked by the car seat as we carry it down the isle. Also that way we would not slow down the line.

3. You have a list of all your passengers who are trying to make connecting flights. If you know you have caused them to miss a flight, have a counter open so that you can help them rebook and get a hotel room right then rather than make them sleep in the airport. Better yet, have someone waiting when you get off the plane. That would be commendable customer service.

4. Telling someone you can only confirm where their bags are not is a cop-out of an answer. It was not the most frustrating part of our evening, but it just added to it.

Also, because our arrival was now a day later we had to find a way to tell our driver who was picking us up at the air airport 4 hours from our home that he needed to come a day later. That was an ordeal, but in the end it was Skype that saved us. Thanks Skype.

AA put us in the Hyatt Regency. For two people in our line of work, there are much worse places to spend a few hours, ya know? We all got much needed baths, the kids slept for a couple hours and room service saved us from having to venture out. Unfortunately we were only there for about 8 hours total, not enough time to catch up on an entire night of lost sleep. Due to our lack of sleep we all began to lose it a bit emotionally...at least the females in the family did, but none more than AB. She was so spent that when she was told "no" for the slightest thing, she burst into tears. She was exhausted and we had a lot more traveling to do. The only one of us who was absolute unfazed by the traveling was DB. Did not bother him a bit.

AB slept most of the way to HK. During the 14 hour flight she was awake maybe 3 hours. DB did excellent, and I can wholeheartedly recommend Cathay Pacific to anyone. They even let families with small children load first. I think this is a great decision. It enabled us to put in our car seats without worrying about slowing others down. This is typical of most Asian airlines (not Air Asia - avoid them). Our 4 hours in HK was great. We got a lot of exercise walking through that HUGE airport, but really it was a good thing and I am not complaining. Our flight in country was uneventful as well - except that they do not allow rear facing car seats on the plane. I was annoyed because that was why we brought DB's car seat, but fortunately it was only a 4 hour flight and they served Hagan Daz ice cream. Who can who can hold a grudge against an airline who serves that? I will say, the closer and closer we got to our final destination the more space invaders and starring we experienced. Once while on our flight into country I caught a lady lifting up the blanket covering DB's car seat to take a look. I also heard someone clipping their fingernails. Other than a crazy guy I worked with in Fort Worth, I have only heard that consistently in public where we live now.

After landing and going through immigration, we had to collect all of our luggage. KB filled 3 carts full of our stuff. Unfortunately I was holding DB's carrier in on hand and pushing AB with the other. He was stuck trying to get our carts through customs and to the door on his own. We decided the best course of action was to push 1 cart about 20 feet, go back and push the next cart 20 feet and then push the third cart 20 feet. Yep that is what he did. He is such a trooper! Finally just as we arrived to customs 2 people helped which was defiantly nice. Somehow our driver's van was just big enough for all of our stuff and 4 hours later we pulled up in front of our apartment.

AB remembered it and asked for Toby first thing - he comes home on Monday. Like I said in the beginning, altogether we traveled 2 days and 13 hours. Fortunately I think I messed my internal clock up so badly that jet lag has not been too bad this time. That has not been the case with the two kiddos but they are adjusting.

Thanks to all who lifted us up during our travels. It truly was a miracle that we made it here with every single thing that we left with - including our sanity.